JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)

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  • and the scars of a thousand spears 2005-02-10 08:27:45
    No video progress in the past nine days; put that down to sickness, work commitments, and other intervening circumstances. I'm still probably going to be able to finish the vid for the AniBo deadline, and I may well also do the other two videos that I have on the docket for immediate completion. Nothing beyond that, though; I'm looking hard at 30 days until shipping out, and in that time I have to reduce my life enough to fit in a 40-cubic-foot shipping container. That's a lot of anime eps to copy and albums to boil down to mp3.

    I watched a video last night that I really couldn't figure out. The footage was technically well-cleaned, and the creator has a fair degree of standing around here, but for the life of me there wasn't anything in it but SUCK. For sure at least as far back as July 2001, maybe earlier, I wouldn't have let it out the door if it was coming off my workbench -- like unto a source-cleaned version of #34. I could see why some of the decisions were made, but I couldn't see for the life of me how they could be explained as preferable or even rational. The perspective that allows decisions like those to be made is so completely foreign to where I'm coming from that it seems almost like another planet, another existence.

    If I ever do publish one of my many periodically-hashed-up, then discarded ".org culture considered harmful" screeds, it will be because of stuff like this. The guides obsess so much over cutting on the beat that videos like this one happen, where the cutting is faithfully on the beat, but the musical motion that should be videographed is in the guitars at a different tempo. People will continue to goosestep down the plank and into the pond rather than taking the blinders off and walking easily around.


    offtopic, and less incendiary:
    HammerFall's latest band-official video is their best yet. At the end, the band turns to ice and explodes in a shower of frozen shrapnel. If only, if only....why must they tease poor ragers so?

    Also, it figures: I go to Germany and Hypocrisy decides to come to the US trailing DT, Soilwork, and Mnemic. GODDAMNIT!! Sure hope I'll be able to get the time off to get to some fests this year.....

    --Kai out

     
  • the light that never warms 2005-02-01 09:15:55
    SH094:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: complete
    - Clipping: complete
    - Edit: 2:48
    - Postproc: none
    - Export: none
    INSO5:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: scaffolded
    - Clipping: 0/4
    - Edit: none
    - Postproc: none
    - Export: none

    Ran into some problems last night, namely the editor choking and dying. I'm currently running through several strategies to get more performance through, most of which involve some sort of prerender....just not any of the ones I did last night.

    I'm uncertain as to exactly what's causing the problem; I don't think it's a memory leak or memory overrun, or even any kind of sandboxing running into VM parameters. And it's not an acquired fault, either; the system will run fine from scratch, but as soon as it loads up the project file, it starts choking.

    Of course, this is understandable; there are somewhere in the vicinity of 110 cuts in the video so far, and nearly ALL of them have some sort of production tweak on them, including the audio. That's a lot of meta-information for something that is not, at heart, intended for intensive editing. Something like 60-80% of this video has at least two video tracks, which is entirely my fault, but the video that I'm making doesn't really allow otherwise.

    So tonight...export while continuing to be sick, and try to get something over the halfway mark. I probably also should go back and try to fine-tune some stuff in the existing part of the video, as this won't really be an option later; hopefully I can use fewer tracks and fewer cuts going into the end (not enormously likely) and finish the vid before the end of the week.

    Threw out the hardware guide for comments yesterday; may write up VM stuff later if work is slow rather than thick...and if I'm feeling up to it. Damn colds.

    offtopic:
    I got an email yesterday to the effect that I hadn't gotten a work-study position at U-M that I had applied for. I've been working full-time in MA for two and a half months, and I had been regularly employed (in another work-study slot) at U-M since the first week of October. That's FOUR MONTHS between application and notification, which is an excellent reason not to try to work for anything connected to the government. All hail the wheels of bureaucracy; they do not err in their turning, but the grist is occasionally so fucking late to arrive that it doesn't matter.

    --Kai out

     
  • we find ourselves confined 2005-01-31 08:47:30
    SH094:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: complete
    - Clipping: complete
    - Edit: 1:55
    - Postproc: none
    - Export: none
    INSO5:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: scaffolded
    - Clipping: 0/4
    - Edit: none
    - Postproc: none
    - Export: none

    Progress on the video was less than expected because I had to come in Saturday and put in 8 hours trying to get certain parts of the machine online. Fortunately, it was all hardware faults, and I picked up some valuable XP. Still, it ate nearly all of the day, and put me in no mood to work on the vid. I'd been staring at computers and wrestling with technical problems for eight hours already, thanks. Normal days it's not as bad, but I was the only contact in on Saturday, and of course that's when the tool decided to go to hell.

    The most difficult part of managing nonlinear editing, at least from the standpoint of my existing process, is just that -- it's not linear. Ever since SH001 nearly four years ago, I've used paper and pencil to track various parts of the process, at first the timecodes where I was cutting clips from, but then after I got lazy just the order they went into the video and any effects applied. If your editor crashes a lot, you should do this too; it's much easier to reconstruct a project file when you've got a paper copy sitting next to you. Unfortunately, it only works well for fairly linear editing approaches; while I still start at the front of the video and work to the end (because that's how the audience is going to watch it), a lot of the time I'm managing two and three video tracks, and the notation hasn't yet caught up.

    The good thing is that I haven't slowed down noticeably. I used to be able to do two minutes per hour, and despite the inconvenience of the Magix preview interface, the fact that I can now do precision timing without being bound by pre-existing clip lengths, and the hurdles of managing multiple video tracks, I'm still running about 1 minute per hour. The downside of this is that if I want to make the videos I've got on the slate before I go to Germany (absent me just taking vacation from when the machine starts getting taken down until I fly out), I have to do just over four hours of straight editing tonight. I *might* manage three.

    Of course, things might go faster now that I've got white and black flash clips in. I swore a while ago that I wasn't ever going to beat-flash, but that seems to go the way of the oath not to use crossfades. The drums are just too prominent in this one, and in the exposed parts Lars is actually playing with some structure, which means I have to do something with the line. I did all the cuts that are currently in the video with bitmap frames, but unfortunately Magix defaults those to like five seconds long, which is just unworkable; this morning before I left for work I punched one- and two-frame versions of flat black and flat white screens through VDub, and hopefully things will go a little faster tonight.

    Also cut up another Slayer song as a result of getting Judge for ten bucks Friday night. "Jesus Saves" got a severe slackectomy and a small speed boost; 1:16 ought to be short enough to get nonstop impact. Two of these thrashblasts and I should be in prime mood to do the slower stuff I've got on the schedule later.

    --Kai out


     
  • howl like a wolf and a witch 2005-01-28 08:47:25
    SH094:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: complete
    - Clipping: complete
    - Edit: none
    - Postproc: none
    - Export: none
    INSO5:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: scaffolded
    - Clipping: 0/4
    - Edit: none
    - Postproc: none
    - Export: none

    Clipping is done on #94, though I didn't open up the editor and start messing with the audio track yet. That I can do tomorrow morning, barring Yet Another Fucking Snowstorm or frostbite coming back from club tonight. Edit should wrap up tomorrow night (hopefully, assuming that I can devote quality time to it), and I might be able to clip INSO5 on Sunday. Six weeks till Germany, must get cracking.

    Especially as in that time I may have to have fairly major oral surgery. My dentist has been bitching at me to have my wisdom teeth pulled for six years, and he finally handed me an ultimatum yesterday: they gotta go. Personally, since he only mentioned one as badly damaged, I'd much rather get 'em drilled and filled; my brother got his out four years ago, and he STILL hasn't gained back all the weight he lost after they wired his jaw shut.

    At this point, there's really only one thing to say: I'm Glad, As A Citizen Of Mr. Bush's America, That I Still Have Health Insurance. An "ownership society" is only fun until somebody bigger decides to 0wnz0r you.

    --Kai out

     
  • stories have lives of their own 2005-01-27 09:28:11
    SH094:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: complete
    - Clipping: 8/12
    - Edit: none
    - Postproc: none
    - Export: none
    INSO5:
    - Source rip: complete
    - Music: complete
    - Precleaning: complete
    - Storyboard/planning: none
    - Clipping: 0/4
    - Edit: none
    - Postproc: none
    - Export: none

    Even though the progress on #94 says that 8/12 are clipped, this is just going by the VOBs, which are not evenly sized; in truth the stat is about 8/9.5. The last movie is extremely short and I should be able to finish cutting it tonight, and possibly commit the audio edits.

    This video is aimed at Anime Boston. They have a strict 6-minute maximum limit, something that has gotten me steamed in the past, because there's a lot of great, tremendous music out there over the six-minute-mark, and doing up a video that will sustain itself and keep audience interest north of that mark is a worthy challenge for an editor. Metallica's cover of Bob Seger's "Turn The Page" clocks in at 6:06. Fortunately, I can chop a good bit off the end without disturbing the integrity of the piece, and throw it back on with all kinds of turbulated stuff for the normal-distro version. Hopefully, I can just do this in the video editor; if not, it's a good opportunity to get checked out on Magix's audio gear.

    I did some collection of non-animated source for the "God Hates Us All" video yesterday as well; undecided about whether or not to get permission to use some of it. On one level, I ought to ask permission before using someone else's art; on the other hand, I'm going to be shooting it full of holes in a way that expresses hate for its subjects, so it's not intellectually honest to go asking permission to destroy. Maa ii. I'll decide later. This project will ofcourse require photo-editing, which is something I'm getting more comfortable with, but there are still things that I don't technically know how to do yet. Always a learning experience.

    CAEN recently announced that my account is in line for termination, which just puts more incentive on me to actually do up a website. I can't keep leeching off UM forever, especially since I don't go there any more. Of course, as this will mean paying money and actually doing some site design (well, maybe the crap I have on my current site could be spun as a breath of fresh air...), so this probably won't happen until just before I go to Germany......whenever the hell that ends up being.

    --Kai out

     
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